Six months after he was trapped underwater for 25 minutes, Gore Otteson admires the Christmsa tree at his family’s Lakewood home in 2010. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)

“He was white and lifeless, still in his pajama shirt and diaper. His head was back, his hair wet, and his face white as a ghost. Nausea kicked me in the stomach. It happened. The water that I had loved so much … had taken him from me.”

That excerpt from Amy and Dave Otteson’s book “Giving Up Gore: When Our Worst Fear Became Our Greatest Gift” details the harrowing moments when the Lakewood couple found their 18-month-old son, Gore, pinned on a log in a frigid, rushing irrigation ditch near the family cabin outside Gunnison in July 2010. He’d been underwater for at least 25 minutes as his family frantically searched for the happy toddler with a penchant for exploring and a fascination with water.

But the Ottesons prayed, joined by hundreds of friends and family across the country and thousands of fellow Christians as a national prayer chain sprang into action, trusting this was all part of God’s plan.

Dave and Amy spent 48 anguished hours staring at a monitor at Gore’s bedside in Children’s Hospital, waiting for a brain-activity blip that never came.

After two days, doctors slowly eased Gore from a cold coma. He was the first patient in a hypothermia research trial at Children’s, testing the advantages of lowering body temperatures in kids who have suffered cardiac arrest.

Gore’s first reaction was to grab for his breathing tube, an indication that his brain was at least sending signals to his arms to get that tube out of his throat.

After three weeks in therapy, Gore Otteson returned to normal life. MRIs showed no signs of brain damage. Doctors heralded the hypothermic recovery, perfect emergency care and the “mammalian dive reflex” that slows the heart and metabolism to protect the brain during near drowning. But those doctors still called Gore’s recovery miraculous. Today, Gore is “a perfectly normal, yet still a rambunctious four year old,” says Dave.